Bangladesh will receive more than 200,000 doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine as a gift from the Maldives.
The Maldives' Health Minister Ahmed Naseem and Bangladesh's high commissioner to the archipelagic state, Rear Admiral Mohammad Nazmul Hassan, signed a bilateral agreement on Wednesday.
On the same day, the shots were delivered to the Bangladesh High Commission in the Maldives, according to media reports.
The Maldives has gifted Bangladesh 201,600 vaccine doses as a gesture of goodwill, with a Qatar Airways flight due to arrive at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka on Friday.
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The gift is expected to boost existing connections between the two countries, according to the authorities involved.
In the Maldives, Covid-19 infections are on the decline. So far, the country has administered at least 733,220 doses of coronavirus vaccine, which is enough to vaccinate 69% of the country's population, assuming each individual requires two shots.
Currently, Bangladesh is administering vaccines developed by four companies – AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Sinopharm.
So far, the country has administered at least 53,016,220 doses of Covid-19 vaccine, enough to vaccinate around 15.9% of the country's population, assuming that everyone needs two shots.
Bangladesh has administered 7,759,714 shots of AstraZeneca as the first dose and 5,414,090 as the second dose so far.
